Why integrated virtual payment pays off in reality
“If you do what you always did, you will get what you always got” – Albert Einstein
At first, this may sound like a comfortable and constant reassurance for your current travel business, but we all know that “the only constant in life is change”, as the Greek philosopher Heraclitus already said many centuries ago.
Today, in a highly competitive travel industry, travel agencies are navigating through tough waters with changing regulations in evolving markets, new sales channels, and developing technologies at an unmatched speed. The era of NDC we are entering in travel retailing is impactful too: more airlines and travel service providers than ever are becoming NDC-ready.
All these factors are putting pressure on profit margins. To properly keep up with the pace, the travel agencies’ mid- and back-office operations need to be ready.
How can you keep control and achieve the process efficiency that pays off for your travel business?
It all begins and ends with automation. And the process of learning about what can be gained from automation in the end may just be the incentive to get started.
Let’s dive in to find out more.
Automation: the manual for change
Front-, middle-, and back-office operations all need to work together. How flexible and responsive your travel agency is, depends on how effectively these operations are integrated. This alignment can be enhanced with the use of intelligent automation. It can accelerate and streamline functions, drive innovation, and boost organizational collaboration.
Once you have opened a booking dossier for your customer, the following steps of order processing and travel service buying become crucial. These process steps must be smooth and with the right data since they are connected to the back-office processes for transaction reconciliation and invoicing procedures.
Automation will increase your agency’s staff efficiency and productivity and will boost theirs and your customer satisfaction for the following reasons: [1]
1. Faster sales and service
Immediacy and urgency in sales are crucial to the survival of the travel industry. A coordinated interaction of automated mid- and back-office systems can speed up numerous important processes — such as reservation management, the management of complex travel packages, and communication with providers. With these coordinated processes, you can make it easier for your employees and customers to have a smooth booking experience.
2. Centralized data and documentation
Gain insightful reports on business performance and profitability. Accurate information on sales, marketing, products, suppliers, customers, and employees helps to find critical spots, improve productivity, and drive organizations in the right direction. Your organization can use data to discover trends and understand profitability.
3. Monitored business performance
An integrated workflow into your system landscape provides you with detailed insights into your company, its performance, and valuable information about your customer relationships. It makes it easy to have a quick global overview of your company.
4. One solution means one truth
An automated system workflow enables the use of one platform to integrate all systems. This will significantly reduce manual labor, save time, and minimize human error.
5. Satisfied customers
An integrated system landscape relieves the challenge of corporate travel management.
How? As follows:
- All spend can be easily accessible and trackable through the booking tool,
- Firms can access their travel spending reports from one location,
- Automated travel management can be accessed anytime from anywhere. This increases employees’ mobility and flexibility.
So, do you have an idea yet where to start automating?
Digital drivers
Let’s have a look again at the benefit of automation listed at the top: faster sales and service, which are crucial to survival. A quick win that can be achieved in that area and securing a smooth mid-office process to begin with, is automating the payment part of the process with virtual cards as the preferred payment method for your travel trade purchases.
The virtual card solution that’s already integrated into various travel agency process systems is AirPlus Virtual Cards Travel Trade.
Before exploring its value as an integrated payment solution, first things first: What are AirPlus Virtual Cards Travel Trade all about?
As digital drivers by nature, the AirPlus Virtual Cards Travel Trade solution is designed for travel agencies to make online purchases at travel service providers like airlines, hotels, OTAs, and various booking platforms. This is a comfort for your travel business with the payment process being digital from the start.
Virtual cards are centrally billed cards, which means they are not assigned to individual cardholders but to your agency as the cardholder. Within your agency, you can assign usage rights to those staff members who will use the card on behalf of your agency with the help of an easy dashboard environment, exclusively for your agency.
Before card usage, you can customize the card settings further and indicate which billing data is relevant for the purchases that will be made.
Furthermore, each card number can be restricted to a specific booking and set to a specific amount, validity period, and currency. This ensures that AirPlus Virtual Cards Travel Trade are both secure and flexible, which is especially convenient when having to handle multiple payments across numerous channels every day.
You can pay suppliers worldwide with these virtual cards, thanks to the global acceptance guaranteed by the Mastercard® network.
You will get one consolidated overview per billing cycle for all travel inventory you purchase from various suppliers, so you have instant visibility of your expenses. Each purchase listed on that overview indicates the supplier it has been made with.
And thanks to indicated billing data with the transactions, you can easily recognize the specific info you need for allocating and matching your supplier orders and invoices and keep your cash flow balance in sight.
The modern merchant model
Speaking of cash flow balance, a growing number of travel agencies are adopting the merchant-of-record model for this reason: separating the customer payment flow from the supplier payment flow is bringing additional advantages to their cash flow.
In the role of the merchant, the travel agency collects the customer’s payments for all services booked through them, authorizes the transactions, and then arranges the secondary payment to the various suppliers related to the booking.
As said earlier, it’s key to become NDC-ready and the merchant model makes that happen for your agency while you work along the retailer concept: your customers can pay along their payment method preferences for the travel package to you as the point of sale. You can pay your supplier separately with AirPlus Virtual Cards Travel Trade without losing out on any conversion while boosting customer experience.
Want to learn more about the modern merchant model? Sign up to read our free e-book.
Virtual cards to make automation a reality
For streamlining your payment process, AirPlus Virtual Cards are the digital drivers you need. For the next step of automation, AirPlus has got you covered too. AirPlus has an interface with several partners in the industry – from mid-to back office system or GDS, so you benefit — with your existing systems — from an integrated and automated virtual card creation flow to achieve the end-to-end process efficiency you need.
Entering your credit card details manually for every booking order is now a thing of the past and there’s no need to change any of your existing systems.
Did you know?
91% of travel companies that use our AirPlus Virtual Cards Travel Trade are making use of the automated XML integration to generate virtual cards for their travel purchase versus 9% that still is manually creating them. [2]
Our partner takes care of everything from importing booking data from global distribution systems to invoices, and more. For travel companies using their mid- and back office system, imported booking data can be processed through multiple channels into one centralized workflow, thereby enabling smooth post-booking operations.
Here's how AirPlus Virtual Cards Travel Trade are generated automatically with your mid-office system or GDS:
- Go to the defined environment and store your AirPlus Virtual Cards account number.
- Open the order, dossier and prompt the AirPlus Virtual Card generation with the click of a button.
- Determine which billing-relevant information to fill in from which you will benefit later when reconciling your transactions for this customer.
- The card will be created and is ready to be used for payment of the travel services for this customer.
- You will receive one consolidated overview of all transactions per the agreed statement period electronically from AirPlus, for easy cost allocation and reconciliation.
“Virtual credit cards offer a secure, flexible, and user-friendly solution for online payments, especially in the travel sector. They allow users to stay in control of their finances and minimize the risk of fraud. To support their use, we have created a solution in our Mid-office that automates card generation and integrates it into existing CC payment processes to minimize manual work.”
– one of our Mid-office partners in Travel Industry
A smooth and integrated payment process that pays off
For your agency to drive automation as well as get NDC-ready and have an optimized cash flow as a merchant of record, start optimizing your payment process now with AirPlus Virtual Cards Travel Trade to reach that goal.
The benefits at a glance:
- Increased automation: The virtual cards can be integrated with your booking platform and payment system, enabling you to automate the payment process and reduce manual errors and delays. You can also automate the reconciliation of your invoices and statements, saving you time and resources.
- Improved spending controls: The virtual cards allow you to set rules and limits for each booking, such as validity period, currency, and amount. This helps you to monitor and manage your expenses more effectively and prevent overspending.
- Enhanced security: The virtual cards are generated for specific transactions and have limited validity and amount. This reduces the risk of fraud, identity theft, and unauthorized charges.
- Simplified travel management: The virtual cards can streamline your travel booking management by providing you with real-time access to your bookings, customers, suppliers, mark-ups, business rules, and payments.
By integrating virtual cards into your office operations, you will streamline your end-to-end travel business process with a smooth payment flow and achieve efficiency and savings, all while enhancing the satisfaction of your customers and staff.
Looking for more insights on how to optimize your travel business operations?
[1] Business Travel Operations | Front, Mid, & Back | Cornerstone (ciswired.com)
[2] Virtual cards analysis: manually vs XML-generated | AirPlus
